Local policies for efficiently patrolling a triangulated region by a robot swarm

Abstract

We present and analyze methods for patrolling and surveillance in an environment with a distributed swarm of robots with limited capabilities. Our approach is based on a distributed triangulation of the work space, in which a set of p stationary sensors provides coverage control; in addition, there are r mobile robots that can move between the sensors. Building on our prior work on structured exploration of unknown spaces with multi-robot systems, we can make use of a triangulation that is constructed in a distributed fashion and guarantees good local navigation properties, even when sensors and robots have very limited capabilities.